We are grounded in Scripture

Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love, that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness, and minister your justice with compassion; for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Proper 6 BCP 230)

In thinking about foundations last week, I naturally thought about the Episcopal Church's foundations in scripture, tradition, and reason; the three legged stool attributed to Richard Hooker from his "Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie," despite never actually writing about a stool. However, scripture, tradition, and reason are the ways in which the Church holds fast to the foundation of God throughout the generations and centuries. 

We live in a very fluid and rapid time of history. We eat fast food, we have instant conversation across millions of miles, we expect to pre-order and know things ahead of time. And sometimes in the midst of all this instant life, the Church seems so slow. It still does things in old ways. We still ground ourselves in scriptures which are thousands of years old. We still talk about events that happened beyond human memory. 

Yet, the scriptures are very fluid too. As we grow and change, our understanding of the scriptures grow and change as well. The stories and the words may stay the same, but our interactions with them don't. In keeping the scriptures as a part of the foundations of our community, we ground ourselves in the community of God and the steadfast love of God which has continued beyond all human memory.